


Witching Hour

by MlleMusketeer



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Being Hunted, Demonic Possession, Gen, Horror, Isolation, Mind Control, Stranded, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 07:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2498867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MlleMusketeer/pseuds/MlleMusketeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are bad places in the universe, places evil not because of what has happened in them, but because of what has come to feed on those memories. </p><p>Optimus and Agent Fowler are stranded in one during what should have been a routine patrol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witching Hour

**Author's Note:**

> To get my dear readers into a Halloween spirit. 
> 
> If this is as creepy as it was to me while writing it, I highly recommend reading it in daylight. Then again, I may just be a wuss.

It was supposed to have been routine.

Examine the anomalous reading. Report back to base. 

The anomaly was in a steepsided canyon, about an hour out of Jasper. There was an old debris dam at its head, built in the early 40s by some architect whose idea of architecture was tall, gray and brooding. Fowler and Optimus reached it around twilight, as a set of minor emergencies around base had delayed the expedition significantly. 

Fowler stepped out of Optimus’s hand—the last mile had been impossible in alt, and Fowler had found it difficult walking indeed—and looked around while Optimus scanned. Even down here, the air was hot and dry and smelled of dust and sage. Visibility was limited by the steep walls—looming some sixty feet above them—and the thick groves of cottonwood trees that against the cliffs, the bright green of their leaves almost unnatural against the red rock and dust. Willows scraggled over the streambed, hampering visibility further, gray and drear.

He didn’t like it. You couldn’t see worth a damn. You couldn’t _hear_ worth a damn. The noise of wind in leaves was all-encompassing, a ceaseless blanket of noise pierced only by the call of a bird and the rising chorus of crickets. 

He looked up at the debris dam. 

The hair on the back of his neck rose. 

It was a dam. Gray cement. Dried pondweed streaking it like tufts of hair on a corpse. Long furrows to help the water flow that suddenly horribly reminded him of the marks of clawing hands—

What in Uncle Sam’s beard had gotten into him? It was a routine mission. He’d been an Army Ranger. He’d dealt with way scarier shit than an old debris dam. Hell, he’d dealt with scarier shit in the last _month_. 

Which didn’t help how creeped out he felt. “Hey, Optimus.”

“I fear it will take some time longer, Agent Fowler,” said Optimus, already halfway up the dam and scanning intently. “I think I may have found something, but it is difficult to confirm.”

“Mind pausing and scanning for other life forms? I feel like I’m being watched.”

Optimus looked over his shoulder at him, frowning. 

“Weird human thing,” said Fowler, feeling like an idiot. 

Optimus scanned. 

“Other than some other small Earth organisms, there is nothing,” he said. 

“Yeah, well… I’ll stick close,” said Fowler. 

It was well after ten when Optimus finished his scans and climbed back down the dam to offer Fowler a hand. By that point, Fowler was more than ready to go. He’d wound up putting his back to the dam and sitting there, trying to persuade himself it was just his imagination, and taking altogether too much comfort in the weight of the gun under his jacket. 

He also tried to remember if he’d ever felt this creeped out before. 

Once, yeah. Camping in high school, when they’d gone to that ghost town and lain out under the stars. Everyone else dropped off quickly but he’d had this nasty creeping feeling.

And then woken up in the morning to pancakes and bacon and Dad swearing himself sick over having spattered fat on his hand. 

It’s nothing, he told himself. Absolutely nothing. Brain acting up.

He was still damn glad to have Optimus offer him a hand. 

“Let’s get back,” he said. “This place is creeping me out.”

Optimus looked around, hummed softly to himself. “Very well. Ratchet will be expecting our return within the next three hours.”

* * *

 

The feeling of oppression didn’t lighten. 

Fowler sat still in Optimus’s hand, feeling the tiny vibrations and movements under his palms, and cast a wary look over his shoulder.

Nothing. Everything was still and silent in the moonlight. 

Optimus himself was quiet, his headlights bathing the streambed in warm light, but even that wasn’t a comfort. Fowler shifted uneasily. It made him feel like a target. 

Above them, rock groaned. 

Fowler looked up, saw movement, quick, furtive, unnatural. 

“Optimus—” he hissed. 

Optimus said nothing, halted. His headlights flicked off, and the silver plane of his face tilted upward, in the direction Fowler was looking. 

There was the soft hum of a scanner. 

“There is no life form in a three mile radius much bigger than an arthropod, Agent Fowler,” he said, a murmur but loud enough to make Fowler wince. “It was… likely the wind.”

Was that a hint of uncertainty in his voice? He did not turn his headlights on when he began moving again, and his pace picked up. The hand holding Fowler came in against his chest, protective. 

Fowler looked up again, at that dark skyline against the stars. Nothing. 

The wind hissed. Leaves clattered. 

Movement. Fowler opened his mouth to cry a warning—

—and the cliff came down on them between one thought and the next, a roar that was physical. Optimus threw himself flat, hunched over Fowler, who pressed his hands over his ears to drown out the din of rock on metal. 

Dimly in the cacophony he heard Optimus cry out, a choked noise like a stalling engine, and it seemed very small. 

Then it was over. 

Silence. 

One breath. 

Two.

A brave cricket started up, faint and reedy. 

“Agent Fowler, are you unharmed?” said Optimus. Fowler opened his eyes to faint blue light. There was a crack between two rocks in front of him; otherwise, the only illumination was from Optimus’s eyes. 

“Yeah, just fine.”

“Good,” said Optimus. “We seem to be at the edge of the rock fall. Can you see light?”

“Yes,” said Fowler. “I’ll get out so you don’t have to hold all that rock, that work?”

“That would be preferred,” said Optimus. “I do not know how much longer I can support this weight in my current condition.”

Fowler was already moving. “Are you all right?”

“Nothing major,” said Optimus. “Please hurry, Agent Fowler.”

Once he was safely away, Optimus pulled himself free, collapsed trembling. 

“My left leg will not bear weight,” he said after a time. “There is a severed cable, and one of the hydraulics has been punctured.” He gazed steadily ahead, reading the damage reports on his HUD. “Additionally, the joint has frozen for the self-repair process. I am unable to transform.”

Fowler looked at the rock pile, at the cliffs above them.  “So climbing out of here is out of the question.”

“Yes,” said Optimus. “I will contact Ratchet for pickup.”

Silence fell. Fowler shifted uncomfortably as it stretched on. Optimus’s brows drew down. 

The wind hissed and clattered through the leaves. 

“My comm systems are fully functional,” said Optimus at last, his voice a low murmur. “Yet I cannot make contact.”

“Are we in a dead zone?”

“No. I sent a transmission from these coordinates earlier this evening. This is new.”

“Decepticons?” said Fowler. “Using some kind of cloaking technology?”

“That would be a gratifyingly simple explanation,” said Optimus. “But Megatron is not one for subtly. We may still hope.” He pulled himself into a sitting position with his back to the rock wall, injured leg extended in front of him. 

“Hope? With you injured? Are you—oh. You think it’s MECH.”

Optimus looked at him a long moment. “Agent Fowler, please move closer to me. Thank you.”

Fowler tucked himself between Optimus’s arm and the rocks, noted a slight relaxation in Optimus’s posture. “You’re actually scared.”

Optimus looked down at him, grave. “I often am, Agent Fowler. I simply am better at hiding it.”

“Can you use your weapons?”

“Yes.” Optimus’s voice was quiet, as quiet as Fowler had have heard him. “However, I am not sure they would help.” 

In the darkness above them, there was a noise, an almost human wail. 

“What the _fuck_ was that?” hissed Fowler, his usual vocabulary deserting him. “Did you hear that?”

Optimus’s head shifted slightly in a nod, and the glow of his optics winked out. 

“That is _not_ MECH standard procedure,” said Fowler. “Insecticon?”

Optimus shook his head. He raised a hand, placed a finger to his mouth for silence. 

Fowler slid a hand under his jacket and freed his gun. 

Goosebumps rose over his arms. Optimus still had his eyes closed, and the landscape around them spread out blue and white under the moon. No crickets. No owls. Only the clatter of wind through cottonwoods, a dense cocoon of noise that would hide the sound of moving rock, of footsteps. Not a human light to be seen. 

Even the omnipresent hum of Optimus’s systems vanished in that noise.

Fowler sat with his hand on the barrel of his gun and swallowed back the rising dread. 

Nothing happened. 

Nothing. 

The wind died down. Optimus suddenly seemed very loud in the sudden silence, a broadcast. Here we are. 

Another gust. 

The wrongness settled around them. Fowler found himself trembling, fingers wrapped around the stock of the gun, and forced himself to relax. There was nothing out here, nothing he could see to shoot at. 

And then a cricket chirped. 

Fowler let out a long breath. 

Another chirp, a different location. 

Another, and another, and the usual nighttime chorus washed over them and took the tension with it. Optimus relaxed, too, and opened his eyes again. 

“You felt it too,” said Fowler. 

“Yes,” said Optimus. He pulled out the scanner. “This reads the two of us, nothing else. Nothing bigger than those arthropods.”

“Nothing bigger,” said Fowler. “Here, I’ve got a flashlight. Could have sworn I saw some ground squirrels around here somewhere on our way out.”

“Do not stray too far.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to.” Fowler hauled himself to his feet. 

There had been ground squirrels. 

Had.

He found one of them at the entrance of a burrow, stretched out as if it had been in mid-stride. It was dead. Ants crawled over it, into its nose and mouth. 

No visible wound, only blood in its nostrils. Bright red. 

He looked back at the rockslide, the bulk that was Optimus. Too far to be killed by the concussive force. And why had it been out at night?

“Agent Fowler,” said Optimus, low and urgent. 

Fowler was only too happy to return. “There were squirrels,” he said. “Found one dead, freshly dead. No idea what it was doing out of its burrow at night.”

“Any injuries?”

“Just blood in its nostrils.”

Optimus said nothing. 

“How long until they come get us?”

“Ratchet will likely send a party out after we miss our hourly check-in. That will be in about forty-five minutes,” said Optimus. “It will take him some time to gather everyone, and if Arcee and Bulkhead encountered difficulties on their mission, it will be longer. From the bridge coordinates, it will be an hour’s travel. I will estimate at least three hours, if all goes well. It may be far longer. I doubt the groundbridge will function within a certain radius of this location, if our communications are down.”

“That’s too long,” said Fowler, not knowing why he said it. The unease around them grew again, as if his acknowledging it had made it worse.

“Yes,” said Optimus.

Fowler sat down again. 

“Do you hear that?”

“The crickets stopped.” 

“It is back.”

Fowler looked up at Optimus, startled. It. Optimus had said it. Like he thought there actually _was_ something out there.

The silence was worse.

Far in the distance, almost out of sight, the great black mass of the debris dam loomed. Fowler looked at it. It looked wrong, like there was something different about it. He shivered and pressed himself back against the rocks. 

Something moved against that black, a swift flicker of movement. Fowler started upright. No animals in three miles. He had to have imagined it. 

He looked up at Optimus who stared rigidly ahead at the dam. 

“You saw it too, huh,” he said. Optimus didn’t move. 

Movement, again. He couldn’t say what he saw move, only that something had. Optimus tensed next to him. 

“Agent Fowler, do you know the history of this area?” asked Optimus in the silence. 

“Not really.”

“Anything? Has something bad happened here?”

“Why would that matter?” asked Fowler. 

“Please indulge me, Agent Fowler.”

“I really don’t know much of local history, Prime.”

Optimus hummed again. “Something must have happened here,” he said. “Something bad. There wouldn’t be one of them here otherwise.”

“Them?” said Fowler. “You know what’s been creeping on us all night?”

“I…suspect,” said said Optimus. “I…have never encountered one before.”

Both flinched at a sharp sound above them, followed by a wail.

“Then what is it?” said Fowler, a whisper. 

“Agent Fowler,” said Optimus, absolutely serious, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Fowler stared at him. 

The laugh bubbled up in the back of his throat, high-pitched and slightly hysterical. “You’re joking,” he said.

“I have never been more serious,” said Optimus.

Fowler waved a hand at the debris dam. “You’re not telling me there’s a bunch of angry ghosts up there.”

“No,” said Optimus. “Sparks do not like to linger where they have suffered, unless they are very angry indeed. Even then, they are specific in their revenge. They are still sensible, sentient creatures for all their incorporeal nature. No. What we have to fear are scavengers.”

“Scavengers.”

“Things that have come to feed on pain and fear. Places where evil has been done attract them, even long ago. The land remembers, and the scavengers come to feed. People do not like to dwell where there has been a murder, Agent Fowler. Surely you have observed this.”

“Yeah,” said Fowler. “But you’re not telling me there’s a big bad scavenger up there trying to take us out, are you? Some sort of psychic predator?”

“That is exactly what I am saying,” said Optimus. 

“And why do you believe this?”

Optimus looked down at him. “I am the spiritual leader of the Cybertronian people,” he said, sounding faintly wry. “Unlike human spiritual leaders, that too is a warrior’s task. There are things that I defend them against, and some of them are indeed ‘psychic predators’.”

“Great,” said Fowler. “You’re not just a general and the Cybertronian Pope, you’re Buffy the Vampire Slayer, too.”

“I will have to examine that reference when we have communications again,” said Optimus.

“It’s a good show. You should,” said Fowler. “Try _Firefly_ while you’re at it.”

Optimus held up a hand. “A moment.”

Silence fell again, and a cloud passed over the moon.

No crickets. 

Just the wind. After a moment, Optimus turned his headlights on again. 

“It already knows where we are,” he said by way of explanation. 

Fowler pulled the gun out and placed it on his lap. He glanced up.

Two flat gleams looked back at him from halfway to the dam. 

“Optimus,” he said. 

Optimus was looking up at the cliffs. 

“Optimus,” said Fowler again, keeping his voice low. He laid a hand on Optimus’s arm and pointed at the gleams. Optimus looked. 

They moved. They blinked out, reappeared with that low wailing cry to the right, at the very edge of the light Optimus shed. 

Winked out again.

They waited for them to reappear. 

One breath. 

Two. 

Three. Long and slow. Fowler clenched shaking hands around the gun. Optimus shook his head. 

Fowler ignored him. 

No eyes reappeared. Silver light filtered down again, the cloud passing. Scant comfort. The thing didn’t seem to mind whether it was dark or light. 

Deep in the dry streambed, a cricket chirped. 

Fowler let out an explosive breath. 

Optimus relaxed. 

“The gun will not do much good, Agent Fowler,” he said. “This creature is likely incorporeal. Much like Unicron.”

“Can you use the Matrix on it like Unicron?” 

“I…do not know. It is alien and might not respond to what little remains of Primus’s power. He and Unicron were polar opposites; this thing is different entirely. It might even find the bad memories of the Matrix fuel.”

“Then what? Do I make the sign of the cross at it till it goes away?”

“Do you…believe in that sign?”

“Not really.”

“Then it will do no good. For the same reasons I cannot call upon Primus; I know Him to be in no position to aid us, and so the scavenger will know too. It will not find the threat convincing.”

Fowler shifted uneasily. 

“Indeed, none of the things Alpha Trion recommended are particularly useful just now,” said Optimus.

“You know, sometimes you’re too honest,” said Fowler. “How do we fight this thing?”

“We do not allow fear to overcome us. It feeds on it. It will grow stronger with it. When we grow too weak to feed it sufficiently, it will kill us.”

“And if we’re not afraid…”

“It will simply kill us. But it will be weaker for it.”

“Far too honest,” said Fowler. 

“It could also be attempting to find a vessel to carry it away from here,” Optimus said, sounding thoughtful. “It may have consumed everything in this area… in which case we cannot give in to our fear.”

“I take it possession is not pleasant.”

“No.”

“What did I tell you about the honesty?”

There was a high thin wail, directly above them. Optimus and Fowler flinched as one and Optimus’s hand came down to shield Fowler. 

Movement to the left, flickering darkness.

The eyes reappeared in front of them.  Even in the moonlight, there was no sense of mass behind them. Just an amorphous darkness, shifting and impossible to focus on. 

The eyes caught him, held him. The oppression crashed down, smothered and choked him, fear thick and rancid, couldn’t think couldn’t breathe—

“Agent Fowler!” Optimus, sharp and rough. The tip of a finger rocked him forward, and the lurch and loss of balance brought him to himself. The thing cried again. When Fowler looked up, there was nothing save for moonlit rocks. 

“Do not look at it,” said Optimus. “I believe it is how it trapped you.” 

“Yeah,” said Fowler, and adjusted his tie. “Yeah. Bet you’re right. What time is it?”

“Around one in the morning,” said Optimus. “The others should be here soon.”

“Will that stop it?”

“It is likely to be too many minds for it to hold under control at one time, yes,” said Optimus. 

Rock clattered on rock. Both looked up. 

Something was silhouetted against the moon, a big doglike shape. Fowler swallowed hard. The head was wrong, completely wrong. He tore his gaze away when those lamplike eyes met his, raised the gun. 

“It will do no good,” said Optimus.

“Except to my nerves,” said Fowler, and aimed.

The thing vanished. 

Silence. 

Wind. 

A cricket. 

Two. 

Both relaxed. Night noise swept over them. 

One free breath, two, the relief strong. Fowler hadn’t realized how tense he’d been until the fear was gone. He sat and breathed, head back, eyes closed.

A sound like tearing canvas, and Fowler’s eyes snapped open. Something flashed past, milky lamp-eyes, bared teeth. Optimus raised an arm with a strangled cry, and the thing vanished. 

Crickets, almost instantly, a huge swelling chorus. 

Crickets and wind. 

Optimus lay with his eyes open and glowing bright, and did not move. 

“Optimus?”

No answer. 

“Optimus!”

Optimus did not stir.

Fowler fired the gun into the air. 

Optimus jerked upright with a cry, coughed hard, covered his face with his hands and shuddered so hard his smokestacks rattled on the stones. “Thank you, Agent Fowler,” he said at last. “Thank you.”

“You did as much for me,” said Fowler. “Glad that was all it took.”

Optimus nodded. “A sentiment I share.”

Fowler held up a hand. “The crickets.”

Wind, and no more. 

Time passed.

It came from behind, the next time. Fowler cried out as the thing caught him in the back of the head, stifling fear. He could feel his mouth forming words, hateful words flung in Optimus’s startled face, but the fear silenced and bound him and after a time there was nothing but the fear, no sense of self, no idea what he was but the fear, the choking helpless terror—

He came to himself upside-down with Optimus staring at him in concern, shaking him as gently as possible. 

“I’m back,” he managed. “Thanks. You can put me down now.”

Optimus did. 

“I do not think we can resist it,” he said. “It is old and strong.”

“We’ve just got to hope the others get here,” said Fowler. 

The thing wailed. There was no direction to it now. It seemed to come from all around, flat and implacable. 

Optimus shook, went stiff. The crickets sang.

“You are a fool,” he said, and Fowler stared at him a horrified breath. “You are a fool, putting such trust in creatures, in aliens. What a fool you will look when you are betrayed. You will be betrayed.”

 Not Optimus. Fowler shut out the other things he said, the long buried things, the things that creature had learned in his head. The hatred. He fired into the air, but Optimus didn’t stir. 

Shit. 

Crickets and wind. Fowler fought the impulse to clap hands over his ears. They seemed to dig into his brain, steal his very sense—

Optimus spoke. Hateful hateful things and they were almost a relief. He _knew_ this was not Optimus, that Optimus was trapped as he had been. Anything would be preferable to that imprisonment. 

He looked at Optimus’s injured leg, and with a mental apology, turned over and kicked as hard as he could with both feet.

Optimus started upright with a cry. 

“You yourself, big guy?” 

“Yes,” said Optimus, a gasp. “Yes, I am. What did it make me say?”

“Didn’t listen,” said Fowler. “Just hope I don’t have to shoot you, next time.”

“If it is that or the fear, I would prefer to be shot,” said Optimus. “I have full confidence in your aim.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Fowler. “Great to hear.”

Optimus huffed a long breath and turned on his headlights. “It will make locating us easier,” he said. 

The light, human at long last, was a comfort. Fowler settled against the rock again. 

It would likely come for him next, he guessed. He had no idea how Optimus would wake him. If he could. He ran a hand over his face, throttling back the near-panic at the thought of that terror. That would only encourage it. 

The crickets were silent.

It was coming. 

They were going to lose.

Fowler’s hands clenched tight over the gun. 

Rock clattered, boulders moved and smashed.

“Optimus!” A voice not his, Arcee’s, he realized after a time, and here came the light, here came Bulkhead bulling through the rockfall. He and Optimus traded a look of delight and relief, and then Arcee had scooped him off his feet, Bulkhead shambling forward to assist Optimus. 

“We were worried sick!” said Bulkhead. “What happened?”

“Long story,” said Fowler, as the crickets began to shrill again, a great swell of blessed noise. The oppression lifted all at once. “Creepy, too. Miko’ll love it.”

“Are you all right?” said another voice, Ratchet pushing his way to the front and Optimus, a blaze of gold and red and blue light. 

“Nothing major,” said Optimus, and lurched forward to place a hand on Ratchet’s shoulder. “And all the better for your arrival.”

If his voice sounded odd, Fowler was too relieved to notice. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want a happy ending, you can pretend Optimus dumped the creature in the brig of the Nemesis, and the Decepticons got Very Upset because they couldn't use it anymore. 
> 
> (The creature lived Happily Ever After in said brig, because there is a LOT of fear and pain stored up in there after all these millennia.)
> 
> IF you want a happy ending.


End file.
